Direct advertising and affiliate banner management is an increasing source of income for bloggers looking to squeeze that last penny out of every pageview.

The hurdle comes when bloggers try to optimize this process into something that is easy to manage and use. While there are a lot of free options out there for Adsense and other specific categories, I needed something that was more of a complete solution for my needs as a blogger that is making money online. For that…I looked to OiO Publisher to handle all on site banner management and direct advertising sales.

What Is OiO Publisher?

OIOpublisher is an ad manager that focuses on maximising your revenue, saving you time, and keeping you in complete control of your ad space.

This php ad management script can be used to sell and serve ads on any website. It can even be used as a WordPress plugin right out of the box!

What are the benefits?

Complete control over your advertising, with fully automated sales

Make money from your websites whilst saving valuable time

Keep 100% of your revenue, forget middleman commission

Run 3rd party ad networks alongside your own ads

Gain exposure through our free ad marketplace

Basically, OiO Publisher promises to control all of your on site banner advertising (whether it be Adsense, Affiliate or Direct) and allow you to sell that direct advertising straight off your site. All of this is accomplished through a WordPress plugin and some simple coding.

Review: OiO Publisher – On Site Advertising Management

When I went looking for a solution to handle all of my advertising needs on Bike198.com, I needed something that was going to be very comprehensive. I need something that is going to handle multiple forms of banner and text advertising that includes direct advertising banners, affiliate advertising banners and PPC banners like Adsense. There wasn’t anything I could find in the free WordPress plugin market that handled all of those solutions quickly and easily. From that point, I went looking for a solution.

Note: There is one free solution that is very comprehensive (OpenX) but the WordPress integration is less than ideal. I wanted a plug and play solution and OpenX wasn’t it.

Setup: OiO Publisher

Setup with OiO Publisher is pretty simple and straight forward. For Wordress users, you are given a plugin that you install just like you would any other. Once installed, you have an admin panel in your left sidebar that controls all of the settings and administration of OiO Publisher. OiO gives you an API key to get everything up and running correctly, so once you have that set…you are ready to setup your zones and get to work.

In the settings panel, you setup all of the zones on your site that are going to display advertising. These can be any size you need to accommodate your site and once you have these zones setup, you can insert them via the supplied widgets or insert the code into your header.php, footer.php or single.php file (the file that handles your posts). This makes it very easy to install ads in your WordPress blog and have the OiO Publisher plugin automatically handle any changes that you make over time.

Zone setup is fairly easy. You have the option of setting up a multitude of options:

Text Ads

Email Ads

Inline Ads

Banner Ads

In this window, you also set up your price, the duration of that price and how many rows and columns you want in that specific ad space (basically complete control over everything).

Each of these ad placements offer rotation options and default ad options to fit the needs of your site. The default ad option is really a great feature as you can determine which affiliate banners and/or PPC banners like Adsense you want to rotate into the empty spots if they are not filled with direct advertising. This is also a useful tool for blogs that haven’t sold any direct advertising yet and just want to serve multiple, rotating ads for increased click throughs.

On Site Direct Advertising Sales

One of the biggest selling features of OiO Publisher is one that you may not use right away, but you will in the future. OiO Publisher allows you to integrate all direct advertising sales directly into your blog. You actually setup a sales page and sell spots from the different zones directly on your site and then use PayPal, Google Checkout or any of several different payment options to handle direct advertising subscriptions and payment automatically. It really is a hands off process and you can see the example I have from Bike198.com below.

This makes it incredibly easy for you to sell advertising space and keep it simple for your advertisers. This alone is worth its weight in gold.

Overall Thoughts: OiO Publisher for WordPress

OiO Publisher is a very powerful tool for bloggers. It can completely handle all of your direct advertising needs on site in a way that solidifies your brand. But the true power of this plugin comes in with its ability to handle all of your other needs as well (affiliate, ppc). OiO Publisher can seamlessly integrate all of your money making advertising solutions into one controllable resource. In the long run, that pays for itself more than you can even imagine.

I actually use OiO Publisher on all of my sites now as my only solution for banner and text ad placement and that is why it is linked in my tools section.

What I Like About OiO Publisher

Handles multiple ad types for bloggers

Built in ad rotation with default ads

Easy to install and integrate

Cheap!! This thing is a steal for the features

What I Didn’t Like About OiO Publisher

Setting up the on site sales pages does require some coding knowledge (support forum is great if you need help)

Stat package is not as robust as I would like to see

If you are looking for a one stop shop for all of your advertising needs on your blog, you can’t go wrong with OiO Publisher.

You ever use Open X the web based ad server? I don’t think it is as user friendly as OiO Publisher. From what I see, if you have a network of blogs or sites you can manage them from one place. Have you ever used their web-based service before?

Does it come with source code that is easily readable instead of obfuscated? Ideally it would do anything I want it to. As a developer, I always like the option of modifying the code to add anything special I want.